New Cancer Friend in Michigan and Some MRI Results

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 01, 2008 09:34 PM

Me and my nephew, Drew. I had to get these glasses to protect my eyes since I have no eyelashes. They work really good so far.
My yoga room.
More snow. This is what our street looks like all winter.
This is my new cancer friend, Jodie. (stole the picture from her site)

What else is new…..
We hosted our first birthday party at our house. It was my sister’s 30th birthday, my grandpa’s and my cousin’s birthday. Everything went great. They all thought our house looked amazing for having been here for 1 month and my family also learned that I can actually cook. I’ve been living in Texas and Georgia for the past 5 years, so I have never cooked for anyone in my family. (Michele and Lindsey, thank you for the recipes by the way).

Our house does look great. I’m very proud of my yoga room. I’m starting to use it a lot. I love decorating, so I had a lot of fun getting our house looking nice. Kevin always jokes that he goes to work and then comes home and sees something new and says to himself “we didn’t have that vase and that plant when I left. Hmmmm”

I made a cancer friend in Michigan. Her name is Jodie and she works for the Detroit News. She has a blog on the Detroit News website. My Dad found her blog and emailed her and got us in touch. She was diagnosed at 26, so of course I can relate. I met her in person a couple weeks ago. She totally reminds me of myself the first time I went through chemo. She’s mentally strong, handling it wonderfully, rocking the bald look with sweet bandanas and she has her blog where she shares her stories with complete strangers too. She is really good friends with my friend Paul from Texas. Small world huh? I’m happy to have one cancer friend here in Michigan. I have tons of cancer friends in Texas who I miss spending so much time with.

I got my MRI results. My bone tumor on my left sacrum still measures 1.5 * 2.2cm. After 24 chemo infusions, it’s 2.2cm. That sucks. They also still see something on my right hip. I know bone tumors take a long time to go away, but this is taking longer than I expected (an my oncologist expected). My blood test only went down by 4 after 1 whole month of treatment. It went from 158 to 154. I’m starting to think this treatment might not be working anymore.
I’m doing 1 more round of Taxol (3 more treatments) and I will see what my blood test does. If it doesn’t go down, I might think of switching chemo drugs. Cancer can become resistant to certain drugs after a while. A lot of people want me to take a break from chemo for a while, but I don’t think I’ll feel comfortable doing that while I have cancer in my body. Plus I’m a tough girl so I’ll go through hell to beat cancer.

My friends Jessica and Joe (good friends from Austin and Michigan State) are coming over to visit us today. Yeah! I used to see them all the time so I am so glad they moved to Chicago, so I can see them a lot more often. We might even get some MSU football tickets together.

I got some beads in the mail and it was so exciting getting them. Thank you so much!! I’ve made some necklaces (actually a lot of necklaces) but I haven’t completed them and put the ends on them. I’ll take some pictures of them once they are complete. Please, send any beads you would like. I appreciate all of them that I get. It is a very expensive hobby otherwise.

Well, it snowed again. Kevin keeps thanking my dad for convincing us to not get a snow blower until the end of the winter when they are on sale lol. I’m going to go shovel and get my morning workout that way. Yeah Michigan!

Take it easy everyone

Much love
Shannon